Top 5 Communication Skills for Project Managers and Leaders

I have been honoured to be interviewed by Jo Ann Sweeney to select top five from a list of 15 communication skills project mangers and leaders need to have in order to lead their teams, despite the innovative communication technologies we have, yet most of todays business problems are due to poor communication, in this post I am going to share my thoughts on the top five skills I have selected The top five skills I have selected are somehow interrelated, however I found that the fundamental ones such as trust and respect will always lead to great results, the following are the top five skills I have selected along with why I have have selected them: 1.Conveying the Vision, Goals & Objectives of the Organisation: Ideally each and every team member has to see the big picture and understand the vision, mission, key values, and goals & objectives of the organization he is working for, this will enable team members to know whether they do the right thing, and will encourage them to think of new ways to enhance business and find less costly ways to do the work, leaders and managers have to keep open communication channels with employees and inform the team as and when objectives change 2.Building Relationships Based on Trust and Respect: Trust is one of the most important traits of a leader, teams will not perform unless they trust the project manager and the organization, and feel they are trusted, trust will encourage people to propose ideas, suggest ways to enhance work, speak of their concerns about the project and give advices, if the environment lack trust culture everyone will think 100 times before giving recommendations and before embarking on any new initiative fearing that they may be blamed or punished if things go wrong. Respect is the other side of the coin, I always believe that respecting people will make them do more and will make them own what they do, I have coined a term called RED Leadership ( Respect, Empathize, and Develop ) you can read my article RED Leadership 3.Giving Feedback: Kenneth Blanchard is saying in his book The One Minute Manager Feedback is the breakfast of the champions, Kenneth emphasized on the importance of giving feedback to employees as and when required, many managers wait till performance reviews and give feedback following the methodology of NIHYSOB ( Now I have you SOB ), other managers focus on negative aspects only forgetting that feedback is meant to be positive and negative, if feedback is given to the team they will always adapt their ways, leaders and managers should follow the principle of catching people doing something right as Kenneth has recommended in his book. 4.Recognising: This is related to feedback, we have to understand that during credit crunch people are very stressed, and so the leader has to motivate and recognize good people, money is not the silver bullet its not even deemed as a motivator, Herzberg MotivationHygiene Theory, people can be motivated by small stuff but it has to be genuine 5.Active Listening: Though listening is one of the 101 of management, Many managers do not listen, they interrupt and impose their viewpoints, a true leader has to listen and give the team a chance to express themselves, listening is the main gate to trust and solid relationships, every morning when looking in the mirror, a manager should remember that he has two ears and one tongue!

Having these five skills would make a lot of difference, teams

Trust encourages team members to propose ideas, they feel valued and once they feel valued they will automatically suggest ways to enhance work, get motivated, unfortunately the problem is with Task Oriented speak of their concerns and Leaders/Managers who treat teams as robots! With giving give advice, If they lack trust, people will think twice before feedback and listening to team members, they will adapt embarking on any new thing, themselves, and also feel valued when they are asked to give fearing they may be blamed or recommendations and advises punished if things go wrong It is not difficult to the project manager or the leader to develop
think whether they do the right things before doing things right, these five skills, though many organizations have a lot of constraints, the project manager should do what he can to nurture the above skills, and most importantly to practice them, even if practicing is done on a very small scale! if the project manager himself doesnt have enough information and this happens in many secretive organizations.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Risk Management

Risk management is the heart and soul of project management, failing to practice it right can have fatal consequences on projects and programs, doing real effort in the planning stage can save the entire investment and will increase the likelihood of the project success, however planning alone is not enough if monitoring risks is not handled seriously, these are seven deadly sins of risk management and how to take preventive actions to avoid them

Disregarding Enterprise Risk Management

Enterprise Risk Management (aka ERM) specifies the processes, frameworks, and methodologies an organization uses to identify and manage enterprise risks of all types such as operational, strategic, financial, compliance, etc. the project manager has to consider the enterprise-wide risks, study what the threats the organization is likely to encounter during the project lifetime, consulting the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) before and while building the risk management plan can have a mammoth impact on the way the project management plan will be developed, the project risk management has to be congruent with ERM, since the ERM governance can impose certain documents to be delivered, probability/impact scales, risk appetite, and risk management software to be used, Project Management Institute refers to those as Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF)

Using Incomplete Risk Breakdown Structure

Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) is the catalyst to identify large number of risks, risk management team use it to identify risks and stimulate the minds of the stakeholders who will be participating in the risk identification stage, RBS can be developed by listing all the root causes of potential risks, RBS highly depends on the project domain, every industry has its own associated risks, risks that are valid to a software project may not be applicable to a construction project. The project manager can start with a template from a known body and customize it based on previous project history and project-specific risk categories

Ignoring Subjectivity
Subjectivity can make risk management lose its essence, always get 60% of the job done and the rest is sort of Just Do you will find that risk averse It!, there are different information gathering techniques to solicit stakeholders will identify large stakeholders inputs, the perpetual problem of risk management number of risks; in contrast, risk takers may be oblivious to information is subjectivity, different people will perceive risks in real risks, it is important to mediate these conflicts during risk identification
risk management, I believe that identifying risks will Risk Identification process is substantial for successful

different ways, for instance, a financial risk may not grab a technical managers attention and a technical risk is very unlikely to be deemed as a risk by a financial manager, it is the responsibility of the risk management team to remove subjectivity and ensure quality of risk information. Subjectivity can be avoided by using Delphi Technique, as it keeps the views of different subject matter experts anonymous even after finishing the identification phase

Assigning All The Risks to The Project Manager

Successful risk management can never be a one-man army, the risk management team has to set clear expectations and inform subject matter experts, stakeholders, customers, team members, etc. of what is expected from them, the ownership of risks has to be communicated to the risk owners, the project manager has to follow up on the status of assigned risks and the risk owner has to report risk status updates on frequent basis. The project manager should not be the only individual who owns risks, potential risk owners may be reluctant during risk identification stage fearing that they may be responsible for the risks they will be identifying, creating a risk management RACI Matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Inform) will ensure roles and responsibilities are clearly identified and communicated

Neglecting Risk Management Benefit Cost Analysis

Not all risks have to be managed, some risks just need to be accepted, response strategies of negative risks (yes, there are positive risks, those are known as

opportunities) are Avoid, Transfer, Mitigate, and Accept, but often times the acceptance strategy is never considered, risks have to be accepted for two main reasons; first is unfeasibility of the three first response strategies, and second is due to unfavorable benefit cost analysis, for instance if the loss value is much smaller than the benefit gained due to implementing a control, it would be rationale to accept the risk, otherwise you would be paying $100 to save $60 risk

Misusing Contingency Reserve

Contingency reserve can only be determined after the project manager has had multiple revisions of the project management plan, contingency reserve should only be used when a planned risk (aka known unknown) materializes, the contingency reserve should not be used for any unplanned risk (unknown unknown), the unplanned risk can only be handled by the management reserve, it is also not right to use contingency quota of one risk at the expense of another risk unless the latter has already become void

Doing it Once

Risk management is an iterative process and should be practiced in all project stages, from inception to closure, it is not right to do it during the planning stage only, nor is it right to stop looking for new risks during the execution phase, many project managers conduct risk identification at the beginning of the project and shelve risks until they turn into issues, the project manager should elevate the culture of risk management and ask team members to report new risks, the new risks have to go through the process of analysis and response strategy planning, the project manager has to visit the reserve balance and make sure that no risk will have no contingency, it is also important to make the risk management on the agenda of frequent progress and status update meetings These were the seven deadly sins of project risk management as I could identify them, it would be great if you can share your experience in risk management and articulate on what could be a sin in risk management from your perspective and how to avoid it

Servant Leadership
Recently there was a job ad for a program manager in the Solomon Islands. Under the requirements section of the ad, it stated that the applicant must exhibit leadership in the servant leadership management style! How many people would wonder what the term servant leadership management means? This style of management has just recently been of interest in leadership and management circles. Historically, the master-servant relationship was used to work projects such as those that involved building the Seven Wonders of the World. In the early twentieth century the idea of management surfaced and gained popularity (Wideman, 2001, p.2). Eventually empowered work teams became a reality and have played a role in projects as well as other organizational endeavors. However, according to Wideman (2001) good leadership is needed or the results can be "fragmented, controversial and lack substance" (p.5). Robert K. Greenleaf had the idea in 1970 that a leader could be servant to those he leads. Larry Spears expanded this idea in the mid to late 1990's. He described a servant leader as being one who strives to meet the needs of those served, who assists people in being their best, coaches, assists in their personal growth, listen well and build community (Servant Leadership, p.1). Larry Spears describes a servant leader as being a servant first. A servant is one "who expresses submission, recognizance, or debt to another" and offers assistance to someone (Atomica, 2002). The individual has the desire to serve others and then to lead. Robert Greenleaf , founder of the term servant-leadership, describes the method for gauging whether an individual has been successful as a servant-leader. " The best test is: do those served grow as persons: do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society, will they benefit, or, at least, not be further deprived?" (Spears, p.1) Spears continues to describe a servant leader as one who " seeks to involve others in decision making, is strongly based in ethical and caring behavior, and enhances the personal growth of workers while improving the caring and quality of organizational life." He states that servant leadership is a new way of being in relationship with others in the modern day workplace and is an "emerging leadership paradigm for the twentyfirst century." Many leadership authors have advocated servant-leadership since Robert Greenleaf first described the term. "Robert Greenleaf's new leadership model advocates that the leader who resides at the top works for those in the lower part of the organization. This is a dramatic shift in earlier management and leadership thinking. By turning the hierarchical pyramid upside down, the needs of the organization, clients and business partners become the focus. The Servant-leader approach "advocates a group-oriented approach to analysis and decision making as a means of strengthening institutions, and of improving society. It also emphasizes the power of persuasion and seeking consensus over the old "top-down" form of leadership" (Spears, p.2).

10 Ways to Lead Effectively It is very difficult to select from the plethora of leadership skills which ones are the most effective ones. If you look at greatest leaders humankind have known you will realize that every leader has got his own personality that was formed based on the

vision and set of experiences he had, although most of great leaders share common traits, the choice of top leadership skills will always remain subjective, here are another ten ways to lead more effectively.
1. Inspire
Inspiring people lead them to think of ways they would have never thought of unless they have been inspired, inspiration is the key to creativity which can lead to breakthrough ideas that subsequently can make the world better! Action centered inspiration is much more stronger than verbal one, when actions are coupled with strong speeches they lead to outstanding results, remember actions speak louder than words.

2. Motivate
Motivation is the fuel of productivity. take some time to read about motivation theories from Maslows Hierarchy of Needs to Frederick Herzbergs Hygiene Factors Theory, understand what makes people tick and tailor motivation to meet peoples expectations. Read my article The Truth About Motivation.

3. Respect
Common Sense is Not Common once said by Voltaire who was born in 16th century and died in 17th century, I dont know what would Voltaire say if he was still living among us today! Respect has become rarified! Respect can be practiced using very simple steps but most of people are reluctant to practice it, when was the last time you got frustrated of people who do not know what netiquette is? Leaders realize the value of respect and they equally demonstrate respect to C-Level executives and junior team members. Read more about respect at RED Leadership.

4. Listen
Actively listen to your people and do not cut off them while they are talking, sometimes you will feel you cant just wait to speak out your opinion, if you want to be a great leader you have to fight the urge to interrupt people. As a great leader you should encourage people to speak of their concerns with no fear and to be part of the decision making process. Remember to talk with your people not to them!

5. Empower
One of the biggest issues associated with delegation is delegating the activity and failing to delegate authority. Todays number one project management problem is being responsible without being authorized thats coupled with taming people who do not report to the project manager and sometimes are not interested in the project in the first place ( Read Weak Matrix Syndrome ). Leaders have to delegate power and be supportive to people. Empowering people is not exclusive to power, it also covers abilities and qualities by giving people opportunities that can polish their skills and nurture their experiences.

6. Tolerate
If you want to know whether someone is a good leader, make him angry! Good leaders are not easily getting angry and they quickly tolerate peoples mistakes. I have a personal story to share with you; I was once staying late in the office with my boss reviewing some software architecture model when a team member came to us blushingly smiling and he said I have just deleted the projects source safe database!, we got stunned as it takes many steps to remove the database

( the Visual Source Safe is the central repository in which the team saves the work files and track different files versions ). Is there a recent backup available we can restore? the boss asked, One week ago! the team member answered, OK, you can leave now, I will manage it with the administrator. I have witnessed this situation seven years ago, but it always flashes in my mind, removing a central database that costed loss of a work week is not a pleasant incidence, however I was impressed with how the boss managed the situation despite all the natural frustration he felt. Most of bosses do not have the tolerance culture, in fact a boss may wait for unbelievably long time until he get it off his chest and probably by performance review in a similar way to Ken BlanchardsNIHYSOB ( Now I have you SOB ) in his great book The One Minute Manager. Great leaders have to tolerate peoples mistake and always be ready for a fresh start.

7. Empathize
You dont have to scratch your head every time you wonder Why the heck these people act or communicate in such a lousy way?! You just need to empathize. Empathy is one of the most critical leadership traits and it is not really difficult to practice, just put yourself in other persons shoes and try to adopt his thinking style for a few minutes, hours, or days then envisage his emotional state. Empathizing helps leaders understand people better and once peoples personalities are rightly conceived everything becomes much easier; motivation, collaboration, and working style become crystal clear. If you empathize you can make informed decision and though it may not be the best decision available you will always feel comfortable. Read RED Leadershipto know more about empathy.

8. Trust
Trust is the cornerstone of all successful human relationships, it is slow to build and fast to lose. You have to ask yourself whether your people trust you and you will definitely have to trust before being trusted, trust is the most reciprocal relationship between two persons. Here are a bunch of Dos and Donts: Do tell the truth Do keep your promises Do share information and news Do lead by example Do listen Do support Dont sugarcoat sad facts Dont ask for unrealistic commitments Dont micromanage Dont lie Dont use position power Dont be fickle

9. Foresee
You dont have to look into a crystal ball to foresee. Great leaders always learn by experience and never repeat same mistakes. Foreseeing requires accurate information from trusted sources in order to anticipate the course of future events. Yet, some leaders heavily rely on their gut feeling to foresee future events and take preventive actions in order to mitigate potential losses.

10. Create New Leaders

Every leader has a vision in which he believes blindly, he doesnt care about himself as much as he cares about his vision believing that a vision outlive the leader himself, great leaders do sacrifice to get their visions translated into results and so they do not really care about their positions, they indeed do what it takes to get results. Yet, many people are too scared to delegate responsibilities forgetting that unless someone has a surrogate he will never be able to move up. Creating new leaders is the most noble trait of leadership.

Leaders inspire, motivate, respect, listen, empower, tolerate, empathize, trust, foresee, and create new leaders. ~ Once Tweeted!

Project Manager's Types of Leadership

A project manager should exhibit two types of leadership as described earlier in this article. These are transactional and transformational. The leader should guide the team members by identifying their roles and responsibilities for the project. In addition, he should inspire the team members to successfully complete the project tasks for the good of the project. "The best project managers are outstanding leaders. They have vision, they motivate, they bring people together, and, most of all, they accomplish great things" (Verzuh, 1999, p.25). Project managers must have integrity-honesty and trustworthiness. A key success factor is getting members of a team to trust each other and trust the project manager in order to work well with each other (Martin, 1976, p.45). When indecision or conflict arises, if the project manager is considered to have integrity, the others will accept his actions more easily. " He will be regarded as having made the decision that best serves the interests of the project and harmony will prevail" according to Martin (1976, p.45). Project managers must have competence with the project technology and business management. Those working on the project and the administration above him will respect him and have more confidence in his abilities to make the correct decisions for the project (Martin, 1976, p.46). Basic management skills with competence in business management are a necessity. The project must be managed using good management techniques that are consistent with the organization's management style. Other key characteristics for a project manager include alertness, quickness, good listening, imaginative versatility, and flexibility. Martin (1976) explains " the project manager must be ready at any time to modify any existing plan for a better one." Flexibility "implies a tough willingness to change plans in light of current realities, always with the best interests of the project in mind" (p.48). The project manager must have a good work ethic and a high energy level. Project management requires more than a 40-hour workweek and interaction and availability to many people in and outside the organization. To be successful the project manager must be in "top form" most of the time (p.49). Stanley E. Portney (2001, p.307) provides ten tips for project managers: 1.Be a why person 2.Be a can do person 3.Do not assume 4.Say what you mean; mean what you say 5.View people as allies, not adversaries 6.Respect other people 7.Think big picture-keep perspective 8.Think detail 9.Acknowledge good performance 10.Be both a manager and a leader

PERT using Microsoft Project

PERT is a technique to depict project activities and to calculate duration of each activity keeping uncertainty/risk in mind, PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was first develop in fifties (1950s), as a method to estimate activity duration, it is often referred to as PERT Chart, PERT uses indeterministic methodology to calculate duration, by trying to anticipate three estimates, worst case scenario represented by pessimistic value or longest duration an activity will take to finish, best case scenario represented by optimistic value or shortest duration an activity will take to finish, third factor is the most likely estimate, the 3 factors feed into a formula which takes probability into consideration to calculate the duration of the activity, the formula is:

For example if you are going to work on a powerpoint presentation, and you expect to finish it in a 2 days, that is not a good indicator because if anything can go wrong it will go, and often time you will not be able to finish it on the promised date, so you have to think for a while trying to come up with the shortest and longest duration in which you can finish the presentation, so if you feed into the formula these values (m = 2, p=5, o=1) this will give you 2.33 days. A project manager should always use this technique in order to manage customers expectations, furthermore a resource has to be aware about it, because what basically happens in most of organizations is that most of professionals are just giving one estimate based on personal experience without considering potential risks, while the one can always buffer the estimate, yet it will never give a good indicator. in the following section I will show you how to use PERT technique using Microsoft Project 1.Open Microsoft Project 2007, enter a list of tasks (always the very first task should be identifying tasks, ideally should be grabbed from a WBS created prior to creating the project schedule), in this case I will use a simple SDLC model, so you can enter Analysis, Design, Build, Test, and Deploy, add a top level task called SDLC 2.Select the five tasks you just added and indent them to make the SDLC the summary task (you can use the Alt+Shift+Right hotkey right away). 3.Do not enter any duration for the tasks, keep the default of Microsoft Project (1day?) 4.Keep the five tasks selected and hit the link button on the toolbar or use the Ctrl+F2 hotkey 5.Save the file and call it PERT.mpp 6.Right click the toolbar area and select PERT Analysis, a new tool bar consisting of 7 buttons will show 7.Select the last button called PERT Entry Sheet, the GANTT view will change to A PERT Entry Sheet including all the inputs required to the above formula, as shown in the below screen shot 8.Go through each task and enter Optimistic, Expected, and Pessimistic Durations (do not enter any values in duration column) 9.As soon as you are done with entering the values, click Calculate PERT button from the toolbar, you will get a warning box explaining that you must have entered the 3 estimates for each task, and that Microsoft Project will ignore any task which does not have all the 3 estimates entered, moreover it will inform you that the Duration1, Duration2, Duration3, Start1,Start2,Start3,Finish1,Finish2,Finish3 are used to store the 3 estimates you just

entered and those fields will be overwritten as soon as the formula is applied, you just need to click Yes, but it is always good to read warning messages! 10.Duration field is filled, and then you can know the best, worst, and most likely duration for your entire project!

If you switch now to the GANTT view you will see that the duration field has been populated with the PERT estimate and voil PERT FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions Do I have to use Microsoft Project to use PERT or can I use a spreadsheet ( Excel or Google Docs )? You can use any software to calculate PERT, you can even use a calculator, the reason Microsoft Project is highly recommended is that it has a robust scheduling engine, and it will always give you the accurate PERT estimate taking into consideration relationships between tasks, for example if you have two parallel tasks you have to take care about that manually because the spreadsheet application will not be able to handle that, while Microsoft Project will efficiently handle this sort of situations If I use PERT technique, will this ensure that the project will be delivered on time? PERT is just a formula that uses whatever estimates you give to calculate the PERT estimate, however if you are not doing some effort to estimate pessimistic, optimistic, and most likely before you use the formula, chances are the formula will not be helpful in this case, also using PERT is not enough, you have to add some contingency in your schedule in order to avoid any inaccuracy results in using PERT, if you use a contingency this will boost delivery on time probability What are the other buttons in the PERT Analysis toolbar? The buttons offer different ways to customize the way PERT works, they are respectively: 1.Optimistic Gantt: will show a table including optimistic duration, optimistic start, and optimistic finish and the Gantt chart will show based on optimistic values only 2.Expected Gantt: will show a table including Expected duration, Expectedstart, and Expected finish and the Gantt chart will show based onExpected values only 3.Pessimistic Gantt: will show a table including Pessimistic duration,Pessimistic start, and Pessimistic finish and the Gantt chart will show based on Pessimistic values only 4.Calculate PERT: the button you used before to calculate PERT after entering all required estimates 5.Set PERT Weights: Used to change the formula weights, you can change the weight value of each parameter 6.PERT Entry Sheet: used to rapidly enter the values for each task before calculating PERT Should I change the weights of PERT formula? The default formula assigns a probability percentage of 16.6% for the pessimistic and

optimistic estimates, while it assigns 66.66% for the most likely estimate, however this highly depends on the project risk and also on the organization in which the project is getting implemented, hence there is no hard and fast rule to change the weights, it depends from one project to another, however most project managers use the formula as is What is the difference between PERT and CPM (Critical Path Method)? While both techniques are very similar, PERT uses 3 point estimates and in fact sometimes it called 3 point estimate technique, while CPM uses one point estimate, so PERT cares more about risk while CPM does not Conclusion Next time you get asked about an estimate, think for a while and try to apply PERT technique, whether you are a project manager or not you will definitely need to use it to have better estimates. If you have anything to say, or if you like the post so please leave a comment!